Isolated invaders face overwhelming odds, but have cards left to play
If Putin’s forces choose to dig in and hold Kherson it will be a bloody fight that Ukraine can ill afford
An army is trapped on a riverbank, bridges blown behind them, without hope of rescue or escape. If it sounds familiar, that is because it is.
The coming battle of Kherson will in many ways be a reversal of May’s struggle for Severodonetsk, where Ukraine found itself trying to maintain an ever-dwindling bridgehead using bridges which come under constant shellfire.
“The way the Ukrainians are going about that is knocking out the bridges over the Dnieper, thereby limiting the logistical support and therefore the availability of things like artillery on the western bank,” said Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute.
“What we are seeing in terms of tactical actions are small opportunistic advances along multiple axes to roll the Russians into a tighter and tighter pocket along the river.
“It could work. If the Russians are not able to reinforce, it could bring about a collapse of Russian will to fight in Kherson and achieve retaking the city at some point.”
Four bridges are key to the fight. The Antonovsky road bridge, which was put out of action on Monday, is the biggest and most important of three that the Russians control across the miles-wide Dnieper.
It is an enormous construction and probably cannot be physically destroyed, but Ukrainian Himars strikes are likely to make it extremely risky to use, even if repaired.
A railway bridge three and a half miles upstream remains open, but is equally vulnerable to precision weapons.
A third crossing at Nova Khakova, more than 30 miles upstream from Zaporizhzhya, is more secure.
The road here crosses a dam holding back a reservoir that Ukraine cannot risk destroying for fear of triggering a flood that could wipe out Kherson itself. A small section that the Ukrainians can (and have) hit, on a bridge over the lock used by river traffic by-passing the dam, is short enough that it can be easily repaired.
But to reach Kherson, trucks crossing the Dnieper here must also cross a tributary called the Inhulets. Ukraine struck the bridge over that river, at a place called Darivka, last week. Bottlenecks and backlogs are inevitable.
The next step would be to deplete Russian air defences in the area to allow Ukrainian drones and ground attack jets to operate.
Without air cover and unable to resupply men or ammunition for their heavy weapons, the over-stretched Russians would be forced to retreat towards the riverbank in the face of subsequent Ukrainian ground assaults.
Eventually the Ukrainians would cut the P-47/E-58 highway between Kherson and Nova Khakhova, dividing the Russian bridgehead in two and leaving the garrison in the provincial capital isolated.
Russian commanders would then face the same choice they forced on the Ukrainians in Luhansk region: stay and fight, or order a retreat early enough to avert encirclement and disaster.
But Ukrainian victory is not a foregone conclusion.
Ukrainian advances so far have been small-scale probing attacks. We are yet to see whether they have the superiority in infantry, armour and
‘The Russians have no good options in Kherson, which is why it would make sense to seize the initiative’
artillery to mount a conventional offensive against dug-in positions.
If Russian commanders choose to make the defence of Kherson a priority, and are able to ferry infantry reinforcements across the river into the city, it could be a bloody and costly battle, warns Dr Watling.
The Ukrainians themselves proved in Mariupol how well-motivated infantry, even when outnumbered and surrounded, can turn a city into a meat grinder.
The Ukrainians have urged local residents to leave in anticipation of a fight. But getting drawn into a weeks-long urban quagmire would favour Russia. It would be politically and militarily preferable for Ukraine if they simply retreated.
The Russians still have some cards up their sleeves.
Conflict Intelligence
Team, an open-source intelligence group focusing on the Russian military, have tracked an increase in railway activity that suggests a large movement of troops from Russia’s eastern military district through Crimea over the past week. The rail movement data stops at the Crimean border, which Russia considers its national border. But cross-referenced with information from other sources it looks very much like a troop build-up is under way somewhere in southern Ukraine, said Kirill Mikhailov, a researcher with the group. Those could be reinforcements more supplies across the bridges, and ultimately more casualties when the bridgehead inevitably collapses.
“The Russians have no good options in Kherson, which is why it would make sense to seize the initiative – strike a relatively forgotten and probably undermanned front like Zaporizhia,” said Mr Mikhailov.
“Trying to hold this very poorly tenable position in Kherson, the Russians are basically ceding the initiative from the Ukrainians.
“That is my speculation, and there is no evidence they are doing that. But we also do not yet have evidence that any of those vehicles have yet arrived in Kherson,” he added.
A sudden strike on the left, eastern bank, a relatively static and likely undermanned front, could threaten Ukrainian supply lines to Donbas and even the city of Zaporizhzhya itself, forcing Ukraine to redirect forces earmarked for the offensive in Kherson.
It has worked before. Russia’s Severo Donetsk and Lysychansk offensive in April and May failed to achieve its strategic aims, but it did force the Ukrainians to push a lot of troops and equipment into the Donbas salient.
That is one reason many observers believe Ukraine has failed to put in a significant counteroffensive so far.
The current lull in the fighting is allowing both sides to regroup.
While Ukraine is frantically training new brigades – including with the help of the British Army programme – Russia is building a Third Army Corps of volunteers at a training ground in Molino in the Nizhny Novgorod region. It is likely to be ready next month.
Whoever gets more men into the fight first has a chance to regain the initiative.
That race highlights the wider strategic picture.
A Ukrainian victory in Kherson would be a powerful blow to Russia, secure the Ukrainians’ southern flank against the Dnieper, and demonstrate to Kyiv’s allies that liberation is possible – especially with Western weapons.
But it will not end the war.
“We have to distinguish between a local counteroffensive that forces the Russians out of Kherson, and a big attack that changes the strategic picture,” said Dr Watling.
“Ukraine is economically severed from access to the Black Sea, a large part of its eastern industrial heartland is occupied, and it faces a very difficult hybrid threat which will persist.”
Dealing with those threats means defeating Russia east of the Dnieper
– a much bigger task that will require greater commitment and preparation from both Ukraine and its Western allies.
There are strategic and political considerations in Washington, not least around the supply of weapons, that complicate those plans.
The GMLRS rockets fired by US Himars systems are in short supply, and the United States wants to retain a minimum stock for its other defence commitments, Mr Watling said.
Ukraine’s allies want all the elements for success in place before supplying enough of them to roll the dice on a grand counteroffensive.
There may not be enough to roll a second time.
That will include more equipment, including Western weapons – but, above all, well trained brigades who are capable of exploiting the opportunity the Himars provide.
“If you want to conduct large-scale counterattacks without taking very heavy casualties, making sure the infantry have good field craft and their headquarters have staff officers who can coordinate armour and arty [artillery] to support those are really important,” said Dr Watling.
The battle for Kherson will be an early test of those abilities.